Located in the heart of Shanghai’s Jing-an district, One Museum Place is a 250-metre-high, premium grade-A office tower with an attached 6-story, life-style oriented retail pavilion, and a total GFA of over 183,000 square meters. The transit-oriented property is well-integrated with one of downtown Shanghai’s newest mass railway transit (MRT) stations. Among its features are state-of-the-art technology, six levels of retail and food and beverage (F&B ) space, and an extensive exterior plaza. In addition, a keen focus on operational sustainability makes it one of the most sustainable buildings in the city.

When developer Hines won the site in 2013, work on the basement portion was already substantially complete as part of a previously-existing mixed-use design conceived as part of construction of the neighbourhood’s new MRT station. However, Hines saw the existing plan as unfeasible and opted to scrap it in favour of a different approach focused on an all-office tower with a retail podium. Much of the already-complete basement substructure was therefore demolished and rebuilt, while the entirety of the above-ground structure was redesigned to cater to a higher population density. All of this was completed on an extremely tight deadline imposed by the need to meet the schedule for the opening of the subway line.

The risks of reimagining such an ambitious project were amplified by the fact that, when it was acquired, the site stood at the centre of an emerging neighbourhood in the Nanjing West Road submarket that was (and to an extent still is) under-construction. It was therefore something of a blank slate, requiring a pioneering vision to understand its long-term potential.

The building has a variety of international certifications and boasts many sustainable features:

• An inclined all-glass curtain wall façade greatly improves building energy efficiency and reduces light reflection from the exterior to neighbouring buildings.
• A variable-air-volume air-conditioning system varies the volume of constant temperature air that is supplied to meet the changing load conditions of the The system can reduce fan energy consumption by 30 to 70 percent compared with a constant-air-volume system.
• A building automation system (BAS) is used for monitoring the operation of chillers in the building air-conditioning control center and also provides automatic control and real-time monitoring of mechanical equipment, pumps, fans, and lighting to optimise operations and energy use.
• All-LED lighting systems and daylighting sensors and dimming devices to adjust the indoor artificial lighting power as needed to reduce energy
• A highly-specified, sensor-monitored, air filtration system.
• An extensive, publically-accessible garden area, which forms a natural extension to green areas belonging to adjacent museum complexes. To a certain extent, the landscape design (and in particular the building setback from the road) has been dictated by the placement of the underground subway station, which prevented construction directly above it. The outdoor area integrates rock, water, shrubbery, and trees, with the subway station ventilation shafts concealed as much as possible by orientation of the vegetation and the undulating terrain.
• Rainwater harvesting and bio-swales retain water for landscaping and floor washing.
• End-of-trip facilities.

The proximity of the adjoining Shanghai Natural History Museum and Jing An Sculpture Park provides an association with art that the developer has embraced, making it an extension of the surrounding recreational and cultural offerings, and helping to activate the entire neighbourhood. First, shared basement entrances from the MRT connect the development directly to the museum, making both its F&B amenities and its 600-vehicle car park directly accessible to museum visitors. Rather than maximising the leasable retail area, the developer has devoted more space to public areas and seating in order to improve user experience, in particular for non-occupiers of the office building.

In addition, Hines has created an in-house virtual gallery/permanent collection of fine art by leading Chinese artists and emerging local artists (all open to the public), and has established a partnership with the Jing An Sculpture Park that has also brought a rotating exhibition of on-loan sculptures into the One Museum Place public gardens.

View all thirteen winners for the 2022 ULI Asia Pacific Awards for Excellence.